RNLD Twitter - Siraya grammar and lexicon

[Anthony Jukes]

Hi all
I'm the first to agree that reference grammars intended for linguists
are not necessarily of use to language communities. But there is no
reason to presume that the only way Siraya speakers and activists will
have access to Adelaar's material is by shelling out for the Mouton
book. In addition, the Siraya people have been fighting for official
recognition by the Taiwanese government, and this scholarly
publication is likely to be useful in these efforts.

Cheers
Anthony

On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 2:49 PM, Margaret Florey <mflorey at rnld.org> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Peter's query is an important one in some contexts. However, I'd also like
> to move us along from the assumption that Indigenous people working to
> support their own languages are linguistically naive. More and more
> Indigenous people are getting training in linguistics in a range of contexts
> - whether in universities or intensive institutes or informal workshops.
>
> Siraya is a good case in point. Dr Jimmy (Chun) Huang is a linguist (PhD,
> University of Florida) and a Siraya language activist, and has researched
> and published on his own language. I expect he will be well placed to draw
> on this new material.
>
> Another perspective to add to the discussion.
>
> cheers,
> Margaret
>
>
> On 19 December 2011 14:36, Greg Dickson <munanga at bigpond.com> wrote:
>>
>> A good point to raise Peter.
>>
>> In my experience of working in Northern Australia with Aboriginal
>> languages and language workers, grammars are generally pretty indecipherable
>> anyway, without a decent amount of training and support to help language
>> workers unpack what's in them.
>>
>> As for dictionaries, the one that I thought community language workers
>> responded best to was the Rembarrnga Dictionary compiled by Adam Saulwick.
>> It has illustrations and a nice layout and with minimal morpho-phonemic
>> processes, the Rembarrnga language suits the dictionary format better than
>> some other languages I've worked with. It was $50 a pop so not
>> crazy-expensive, but still - most Rembarrnga speakers wouldn't have known
>> about where/how to get a copy, let alone be able to afford one and what's
>> worse is that the Art Centre that produced has sold them all and doesn't
>> seem interested in printing any more!  So while this was a resource
>> community members found useful, accessibility was still a problem.
>>
>> The issue remains a difficult one... I feel that if you have a few people
>> working on the ground in language communities who can share the information
>> that is contained in grammars and dictionaries in a meaningful way, then
>> you're doing more than a book on a shelf can do. Furthermore, if producers
>> of such materials have involved community members in their production, then
>> you've already make good headway even before publication. A good training
>> program, support for community language work and/or involvement in resource
>> production will counter the expense or inaccessibility of published
>> resources, in my opinion.
>>
>> You can't really tell from the outside anyway - some linguists may have an
>> expensive publication but disseminate dozens of PDFs or printouts to
>> community for free. Others may have a great publication but move on to
>> another language or job and become inaccessible to community members.
>>
>> My two cents on an important issue...
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Greg.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> On 19/12/2011 9:41 AM Peter Keegan wrote:
>>
>> From  RNLD Twitter
>>
>> >A new grammar and lexicon of #Siraya language of Taiwan has been
>> > published. Great news for those revitalising
>> >Siraya
>> > http://www.degruyter.de/cont/imp/mouton/detailEn.cfm?id=IS-9783110252958-1
>>
>> This is excellent news for those of us that are Austronesians and/or
>> Austronesianists.
>>
>> But I can't help but wondering that, at USD $195 (eBook same price) and
>> written in English, whether or not
>> that this is really going to be of much use to Siraya speakers and those
>> interesting in revitalizing Siraya.
>>
>> Can anyone provide me with an example of a recent grammar/lexicon produced
>> by a Linguist
>> that is accessible and that indigenous people actually find useful ?
>>
>> regards,
>>
>> Peter J Keegan (Auckland, New Zealand)
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Dr Margaret Florey
> Co-Director and Senior Linguist
> Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity
>
> ph: +61 03 9662-4027 (office)
> skype: RNLDorg
> PO Box 627
> Carlton South, VIC 3053
> Australia
>
> www.rnld.org
> ABN 24 215 634 040
>